Ethan Hawke is reuniting with Scott Derrickson for a new horror movie, and it looks like they are dialing up the scares once again.

The two first teamed up for Sinister (2012), a horror film in which Hawke plays a true-crime author who stumbles upon something horrifying while investigating his latest book. The pair reunited almost a decade later for The Black Phone (2021), with Hawke playing a serial child abductor known as the Grabber, and Derrickson returned to direct the sequel, Black Phone 2 (2025).

Now, during an interview with Polygon promoting his new movie The Weight, Ethan Hawke was asked if he would be interested in returning to the horror genre, and he revealed that he is reuniting with Scott Derrickson for a new movie. Read his full comments below:

I don’t have agendas like that about what kind of movie, really. I like people. Yeah, Scott and I are working on something right now. I think he’s so gifted. I like working with him.

Hawke kept the details of that “something” under wraps, leaving it unclear whether they could be revisiting one of their past collaborations for a sequel or reuniting for a completely new horror story. The most likely explanation would be Black Phone 3, as the past sequel resurrected Hawke’s Grabber while expanding the franchise’s supernatural mythology.

The sequel was met with positive reviews from critics and was another box office success, grossing $132 million against its $30 million budget. There is still plenty of story left to explore, especially after the sequel revealed that the Grabber’s reach extends far beyond his original reign of terror in 1978 Denver.

Still, there is good reason not to assume that is the case. When Black Phone 2 premiered last year, Derrickson and his co-writer C. Robert Cargill remained deliberately vague about the possibility of a third film. During a previous interview with Polygon, Derrickson said they had not even discussed Black Phone 3, while Cargill explained that they would need to come up with a strong enough idea to make another return to these characters worthwhile:

I can’t think about filmmaking that way. I understand that’s the business of the studios, trying to create film franchises. And I certainly respect film franchises as a horror fan. But as a filmmaker, I have to go one film at a time, and any film that I work on, I have to feel like this might be the last one I get to do. So it had to be complete. We haven’t had one conversation about a Black Phone 3, and I don’t know that we will.

Would we love to work with [Black Phone stars Mason Thames, Madeleine McGraw, and Ethan Hawke] again? Absolutely. Would we love to get the band back together? Absolutely. Would I love to explore those characters some more? I thought about it. But it all comes down to: Is there a good enough idea to justify us putting a year of our life into making that? When you commit to a movie, that becomes part of your life for at least a year. So it’s really got to be something really great and inspiring for us to want to make a third one.

There is also Sinister, which marked Hawke and Derrickson’s first horror collaboration. Hawke starred in the original but sat out the sequel, Sinister 2 (2015), which was directed by Ciarán Foy and panned by critics, earning a 14% Rotten Tomatoes score.

Otherwise, Ethan Hawke and Scott Derrickson may be working on something completely new. For now, fans will have to wait and see what the duo has up their sleeves.